Album reviews (Neil Young & Crazy Horse, The Wallflowers and more)

Neil Young & Crazy HorsePsychedelic Pill(Reprise)
Anyone who’s witnessed Neil Young in full, glorious, electric, feedback-drenched flight with co-pilots Crazy Horse is probably salivating at the thought of the first album of original music from the pairing in over a decade-and-a-half (earlier this year, they released the surprisingly effective Americana covers album). Adding to the drip is a nine-song setlist that features a trio of tracks clocking in at over 15 minutes and a title that promises an atmospheric jump that would make Felix Baumgartner’s freefall seem like a drop from the top bunk. Sadly, while it’s not an entire failure, Psychedelic Pill certainly ranks as a disappointment, if not a victim of its own expectations. That includes the surprisingly jamless jam sessions. Album opener “Driftin’ Back” which, even given more than 27 minutes to go somewhere and get something done, does exactly what its title suggests — floats and meanders without a real purpose or, worse, power. Even as a trip, it’s surprisingly staid and untrippy. And lyrically, well, wow, few as they are, it certainly doesn’t contain Neil’s most inspired prose with the singer railing toothlessly against art and corporate greed, including the music industry, and features some pretty broad and somewhat tired swipes (eg. “I used to dig Picasso/Then the big tech giant came along and turned him into wallpaper/Hey, now, now, hey, now, now/I used to dig Picasso”). The rest of the record doesn’t fare much better, including the title track, with distorted vocals, which sounds as if it were recorded in an iron lung — perhaps that’s why he found it necessary to tack on a great, straight vocal version at the end of the record — and the earnest, nostalgia country-rockers “Born In Ontario” and “Twisted Road,” which are pretty standard stuff. Granted, delivered live they might gain a little air, find a little more flight, but in album form, they plop like an Alka-Seltzer with very little fizz.Rating: 3.5 out of 5–Mike Bell, Postmedia News

ElisapieTravelling Love(Avalanche)
After charming with her 2010 solo debut There Will Be Stars, Elisapie Isaac drops the last name and returns with an all-out pop album. Surrounding herself with a crew of talented men, from co-songwriter Jim Corcoran to Patrick Watson bandmembers Robbie Kuster (drums) and Simon Angell (bass), and producers Éloi Painchaud and François Fontaine, she embraces the esthetics of Abba and Blondie en route to a wonderfully peppy song cycle that should introduce her to a much broader audience. Opener “The Beat” is an utterly hummable ditty about musical/romantic emancipation; “For Me” (featuring Montreal folk-rocker Bradd Barr) sounds like an early Bran Van 3000 hymn; “Salluit” pays touching tribute, in Inuk and English, to her hometown in Nunavik; while “The Earth Moved” has a steady groove and a classic feel. Giddy, soulful and intuitively infectious, Travelling Love finds Elisapie in her element.Rating: 4 out of 5–T’Cha Dunlevy, Postmedia News

SonReal + Rich KiddThe Closers(Black Box Recordings)
Pairing Toronto producer/MC Rich Kidd and Vancouver rapper SonReal was a stroke of genius for the folks at Black Box to release. Kidd is an A-lister working with Drake, Shad, Redman, K-os and others while SonReal is a regular fixture in and around the West Coast scene. Together, they dial up some swaggering, high-energy from “The Openers” to the closing “Slumber (The Closers).” Along the journey, it’s Kidd’s whipsmart beats that leave the biggest impression, but both rappers hold up against them, if mining a tad too familiar terrain with “Money, Money,” “Best Believe” and others. Not to mention one silk smooth ballad on “Hometown,” that just screams make-out music. I’d like to hear them do another one and have more to say than “take those clothes off and make that ass pay.”Rating: 3.5 out of 5–Stuart Derdeyn/Postmedia News

The WallflowersGlad All Over(Columbia)
The son-of-legend syndrome is one of rock music’s trickiest areas to venture into — for artist, listener and critic.
It’s completely unfair to measure Jakob Dylan against his dad, which is why the topic of Bob is notoriously off the table in interviews. Certainly no other singer of Jakob’s generation has had to suffer such impossible comparisons right out of the gate. Even after a seven-year break from the Wallflowers, it’s unlikely that anything has really changed.
On the other hand, based strictly on their music, would performers like Adam Cohen, Sean Lennon, Ziggy Marley and Jakob have found a ready-made audience waiting for them? It’s a legitimate question, virtually impossible to answer. There’s a double-edged sword representing the expectations that have become both a blessing and a curse.Glad All Over, like its five Wallflowers predecessors, makes the experience a bit easier by working hard to be different from a Bob Dylan album — unlike, say, Adam Cohen’s young-Leonard sound-alike disc, Like a Man. And although Jakob Dylan wrote all the lyrics here, the entire band collaborated on the music, making the sound a true group effort.
The album has a sturdy rock punch, unlike Dylan’s most recent solo release, the excellent, mainly acoustic Women + Country. This Wallflowers return is also an amiable one, gently pushing all the right mainstream, plugged-in buttons. But it’s hard not to notice that its main influences are singers who, ironically, owe a gigantic debt to Dylan Sr. In other words, you hear quite a lot of Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Jackson Browne in the melodies and arrangements here.
In the end, maybe no one can escape, and Jakob Dylan is simply forced to work harder at it. It is his cross to bear.
He tosses off the legacy burden most convincingly on “Reboot the Mission,” which evokes late-period Clash with its urban-jungle rhythm. Fittingly, former Clash guitarist Mick Jones makes an appearance on the track, as he does on the infectious highlight “Misfits and Lovers.”
Elsewhere, the disc mostly sticks to a known path that keeps things enjoyable, if not adventurous: the brittle, riffy blues rocker “The Devil’s Waltz,” the driving and stately “It Won’t Be Long (Till We’re Not Wrong Anymore),” the unsettling “It’s a Dream” and the awkward, but endearing soul of “Have Mercy On Him Now” sound both familiar and comfortable.
The latter track was, no doubt, intended for someone else, but could Dylan have been looking inward as well? “It’s not that easy, it’s bittersweet/ Having to watch him out there finding his feet/ Seeing him cut his own teeth/ Keep it simple, keep it straight/ All the pitches right up and over the plate/ And even give him a break,” he sings.
On its own terms, then, Glad All Over might not be a classic, but it gets the job done.–Bernard Perusse, Postmedia News